Grohl says the studio and its Neve 8028 recording console changed his life: He was the propulsive drummer in game-changing grunge-rock band Nirvana when that then-unheralded group entered Sound City and recorded its “Nevermind” album.

Released in 1991, that album made Nirvana one of the biggest rock bands in the world, and Grohl asserts that it would never have existed in its remarkable, edgy-yet-accessible form without Sound City and the Neve.

The “Sound City” film — which I’d recommend to any fan of rock music, sound or cities — also examines ways that technological changes have impacted popular music. Grohl doesn’t bemoan technology’s advances, but neither does he claim that ease and speed of computer-based digital recording — nearly every new recording played on radio today not made by Jack White was recorded via computer programs such as ProTools, rather than on analogue tape — has necessarily made things better. Continue reading →

Click to see a decades-spanning gallery of Johnny Cash photos (this image of Cash in 1995: Rex Perry / The Tennessean).

Rare recordings from Johnny Cash's early career will be much less rare in February, when Columbia/Legacy releases From Memphis To Hollywood, a double album featuring previously unreleased demo recordings, live radio recordings, non-album singles and B-sides from Cash's 1950s time at Sun Records and '50s and '60s days on Columbia Records.

After a week of drying out, loading out, cursing losses and filing claims, Saturday seemed a fine evening for a party.

So 150 music industry veterans gathered at downtown club Cellar One to remember what once was. Changes come through natural disasters and natural progressions, and the music business shifts mostly on the latter.

Saturday’s party was a reunion for those who worked at Columbia Nashville and sister label Epic Records in the years between 1975 and 1995.

“You make friends in this business, even when things don’t work out right,” said Roy W. Wunsch, who ran CBS Nashville in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Wunsch and Mary Ann McCready served as hosts for the reunion. “And for so many of us, this is about getting Billy Sherrill out there with his old friends.

When we last saw the Dixie Chicks together, they were collecting five Grammy awards, including an all-genre best album trophy for Taking The Long Way, back in February of 2007.

Since then, they've been largely out of the public eye. No singing on public stages, no insulting of presidents, no skirmishes with Toby Keith. No music, and no news.

Ah, but on Monday, a publicist at Columbia Records told CMT.com that Chick sisters Emily Robison and Martie Maguire will release an album on Columbia, without Dixie Chicks lead singer Natalie Maines. The publicist had no information on a release date or a title.

So, the Chicks are breaking up? Well, not so much. Maines' father, the Texas-based producer and steel guitarist Lloyd Maines, told CMT's Edward Morris that all three Chicks hung out together with their families over the holidays and that the trio is "definitely still an entity." Maines said Robison was working on some demonstration recordings, and that Maguire is doing a fiddle album that will include an instructional book.

So, in the future, we can expect... some kind of stuff from members of the Dixie Chicks. Everyone clear?

Roots-rocker Pete Yorn plays Nashville’s Cannery Ballroom on July 16th while touring in support of Back and Fourth — his first new album in three years. (Listen to the album below.)

Back is also the first of three albums the “Strange Condition” singer plans to release over the next six months. Next in line is Break Up, an album of duets Yorn recorded with actress/singer Scarlett Johansson, followed by a collection of songs he cut in a matter of days with Pixies frontman Frank Black.

When asked what’s brought on this sudden creative streak, Yorn replies, “I have a lot of nervous energy I have to get out of my system.”

He won’t elaborate on where that nervous energy came from, but the stark lyrics on Back suggest that he’s experienced some turbulence in his relationships.

“I wrote lyrics first,” Yorn says. “They were almost like journal entries. I never did that before. I just wrote my thoughts down and they ended up becoming songs…There aren’t any riddles in this thing. I think it was a reaction to what I had done in the past, and I wanted to make a record that was direct. A lot of it was kind of revealing for me. I wasn’t hiding behind anything.

“I’m looking at it as part of a bigger picture,” he says. “My other records, to my ear, have been very all over the place, stylistically. (These projects) each have a sound. Once we have them all out, they’ll really work together as different pieces.”